Book report: the cool boffin written by pete johnson
English Book Report, Gabriel Maresch 7C II, in March 1997
True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole written by Sue Townsend
Before I'm going to start introducing the book's persons I want to say in advance that this is not a "common" book with a clear plot. This book consists of several, temporal and regarding content, not connecting extracts of Adrian Mole's dairy written between 1984 an 1989, between the time he was 16 and 21. This book-report is going to fit to this lack of action and is going to concentrate on the persons, especially on A. Mole. Sometimes quotations of Adrian will be used to convey his sarcastic humour. Don't be too shocked because of some offensive expressions Adrian uses from time to time.
Main characters
Adrian Mole - He's the author of the diary and therefore the main character of the book. It doesn't take a long time to get his personality. He's open-minded, very self-confident but lives on another planet, he's the archetype of an artistic. To sum up: Adrian is an undiscovered poet. He lives in a semi-detached house in Leicester. He describes himself, "I'm dark, but not dark enough to be interesting: no Celtic broodiness.
My eyes are grey, my eyelashes are medium length, nothing exciting here. My nose is high bridged and I've got a chin, though. No mean achievement considering my pure English genes [...]" He thinks he is a trendsetter, his style of dressing is, whatever he means by that, idiosyncratic.
He is wearing a balacalva helmet knitted by ancient yet nimble-fingered Grandma. His shirt once belonged to an Canadian lumberjack with a perspiration problem. He also wears one white and one black sock; the white one symbolises his inner purity and morality, the black one the evil in his soul. A copper bangle hopefully will guard him against arthritis in old age.
Adrian is a hypochondriac, he fears having too many female hormones and thinks to face a castration not to be burdened by any children. He's not very political, although he has founded his own party, the Mole Movement, which only member he is.
Adrian Mole, a passionate anti-smoker and a committed "nihilistic existentialist" is proud of his superior intellect; when he meets a "low brewed" person, he forces him or her into a philosophical conversation. His life's work is the pursuit of beauty over ugliness, of truth over deceit and of justice over people hogging all the money. He's fed up with the sickening talks that women have nowadays, full of words like "unfulfilled, potential, identity, environment, socio-economic and chauvinistic attitude".
Nothing the less, Adrian Mole has a girl-friend, Pandora Braithwaite, who is his true love. Their relation is deep, but she's still a virgin, that's why he likes the rain washing away his sexual frustration. But he also admires Sarah Ferguson, who was born to become his wife.
He writes letters to her, rings the Buckingham Palace and sends a telemessage to prevent her from marrying the "oaf" Prince Andrew.
His father - He is on the dole, an innocent victim of the robot culture, where machines are preferred to people. Therefore he blames mainly what he calls "Thatcherism". Adrian describes him like this: "He can't wash his face without sounding like two warthogs mating in a hole. I can't imagine how I managed to spring from his loins, but he's quite a wit after a couple of glasses of vodka."
His mother - Adrian regrets that she has not married a maggot farmer, whose hobby was poetry, but who preferred the maggots to Adrian's mother.
She is known for her compassion towards other married women.
His little sister - Adrian thinks that "she will grow up to be a psychotic". He has already urged his parents to take her to Child Guidance Clinic before it's too late ...
His grandparents - They are nerve-racking.
After Christmas Day Adrian knows why his mother turned out to be wilful and prone to alcohol abuse. It's a reaction against her lousy moronic upbringing. Adrian blames the government for the condition of the adult's world: since they put rat poison in the water supply most of the adult population has gone barmy.
Barry Kent - He is Adrian's best friend. When he describes him, theses are the only passages of the diary, which really can be taken seriously. His dad has died and his mother had lost her job.
He receives nothing for Christmas, they didn't even have the money to purchase a tree. Barry got two years imprisonment for criminal damage to a privet hedge. He became a victim of the law system. Helpless, lonely, he complained that psychopaths got more respect than he ...
Adrian outlines a typical day of his
He gets up at seven and lets the dog out to pee on the next-door neighbour's lawn. Then he occupies the bathroom and enjoys the World News while having breakfast. At school he ignores most of his fellow students laughing about the previous night's drunken debauch - Adrian prefers studying. The breaks he spends with Pandora talking about world events grouching about the world's fate. After school they care for two old Communists, who refuse to die until they see the fall of Capitalism. In the evening Adrian watches soap operas, because he thinks that it's important for intellectuals to keep in touch with popular culture.
The rest of the action
Adrian doesn't get his A-levels, instead he works at a library, where he's surrounded by half-witted people. His hobby is still poetry, he writes about "The tadpole's difficult journey to froghood" ...
He has got a new, rather dull girlfriend to satisfy his sexual urge. When Adrian sleeps, he has nightmares about her; his true love is still Pandora, who has gone to Oxford to study Russian, Chinese and Serbo-Croate.
Adrian loses his job. So his is jobless and homeless, because his mother rents his room at home. He decides to join Pandora, fall on her neck and plead sanctuary. But she is already married ...
to a queer. She's aware of that, but is too lazy to start divorce proceedings. The answer whether Pandora and Adrian become a couple again we'll find in the continuation of Adrian Mole's diary
The Sunday Times entitles this book: "Wonderfully funny and sharp as knives". I can fully join this line. The book is packed with black, sarcastic humour. Adrian expresses his thought and feelings in a direct an uncomplicated way.
But it's lacking of some deep and serious background. I couldn't see a real message in it. That's what we can reproach to the author, Sue Townsend. The diary is quite mixed up, it's hard to find a thread, which leads through the book. But it's very pleasant to read and is, most important of all, really great fun.
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